13th Sunday After Pentecost: Taking the Opportunity to Serve

This weekend's Scripture readings are a great challenge to those of us who are part of Liturgical worship style traditions.  We like our Liturgy and Music in an oh so perfect way.  As wonderful as Liturgical worship is, we often forget that it is the people that help create it.  The people who come to be part of our worship, come with heavy burdens and wounds that need so much healing.  As people of Faith we can stick to all of the rules and completely miss the needs that those who come to worship and pray with us bring.  Today's readings are a reminder that worship is for the people, not people for the worship.  God gives us the gift of faith so that we can worship and pray as people who need the loving, tender and healing mercy of God. 

Today's first reading from Isaiah reads: *(write now and post the reading after)*

Isaiah 58:9b-14

If you remove the yoke from among you,

the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness

and your gloom be like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in.

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,

from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;

if you call the sabbath a delight

and the holy day of the LORD honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways,

serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

then you shall take delight in the LORD,

and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;

I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,

for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

 The reading reminds us that serving others in need is as important a part of our lives as Christians as worship is.  As Christians we often worship in spaces where there are candles lit.  The point of spending some time with the Light of Jesus Christ as a focal spot in our worship is to take that light from our worship and spread it throughout the darkness of the world we live in.  As lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning and queer members of Christ's Body the Church, we bring a great message of light to the Church and society, that being LGBTQ is not evil and therefore any and all prejudice shown to us is wrong.  Discrimination and bigotry are part of the world of darkness.  Violence towards people based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, religion, challenge etc keeps the streets of our world in darkness and many families and communities from taking care of those who hunger to be included with a sense justice and equality.  When we worship God while maintaining inappropriate attitudes towards people who are different than what we think they should be, our worship and the Gospel we read, the Eucharist we share in are just some exercises we do with no real results in our own lives and the communities in which we live.

In today's Gospel reading Jesus healed a challenged woman on the Sabbath while he was at worship.

Luke 13:10-17 (NRSV)

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Now here is an interesting set of events.  A woman who was physically challenged for many years has just been healed, and those standing around are more concerned about the rules of the Sabbath than the woman who was healed.  Sometimes paying too much attention to rules can cause us to not notice what is happening in the real lives of real people.  Jesus shows us in today's Gospel that the real people who the Church needs to reach out to, they need to be the priority.  Everyone needs friends and people to share their hurts and hopes with who need the healing touch of accepting and helpful communities.  In our worship as we pray for and with each other, we are serving others.  However, it should not stop when we leave our communities of worship. 

Over the past couple weeks some great healing has begun for the LGBTQ communities with the ruling on Prop 8 by Judge Walker in California.  When there is marriage equality for all people, then all people can share in the rich tradition of the Sacramental Rite of Matrimony as well as be licensed by the State.  Then individuals who are alone can live their lives committed to each other, share in the burdens as well as the joys of being a family united together in love.  Real people are served, because Marriage is no longer meant for heterosexuals alone, but it is now something that every one including same sex couples and individuals who are transgendered can find healthy, loving and committed relationships.  However, organizations like the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Catholic Bishops and the like, they have to stick their nose in and do all they can to force people to live by their set of rules, by their interpretation of the Bible, however erroneous they are.  Because such organizations along with those who accept and aggravate others with their biased rhetoric, instead of opening their hearts and the doors of church and State communities to bring the light of healing through Marriage, they want to keep LGBTQ couples in the darkness of inequality.  It is very much like complaining about Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath.   God has made Marriage for all people of love, not just a certain group of people who fit into a particular understanding of the Bible.

When LGBTQ people help establish communities of Faith, social opportunities, job opportunities, and help restore run down areas so that they are more livable, LGBTQ people are helping to heal a broken world.   It is important that the LGBTQ communities always find room for everyone to find space in those places that work best for them.  When everyone who is LGBTQ can find a good home for themselves, their significant others with others whom they can love and share their lives with, and impact the community for the better, the Light of God becomes visible in those places.  They are opportunities for the LGBTQ Communities to help show those who have their biases both in and outside our communities, that there is always room for positive and life-giving change. 

We are invited today to consider what we will do with the opportunities given to us.   As we worship God in our communities and share our love with our partners, husbands, wives, boy or girl friends, and our transgendered people, we are invited to see in each person a real individual who needs the healing mercy of God.  We are called to be instruments of healing, where we help bind up the wounds that so inflict our world and our communities, so that the darkness of the world can see the Light that is Jesus Christ.  How we accomplish that is what we need to be asking the Holy Spirit about.  Each of us has gifts and needs the Holy Spirit to help us find those opportunities and places where we can serve others and bring the Light of Christ into our broken and wounded world.  The Holy Spirit always has work for us to do when we ask her to help us know what we are to do.  It is so important that we keep ourselves open to respond to the Holy Spirit when she calls us to serve those real people that our worship of God directs us to do.

Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 16, Book of Common Prayer, Page 232)

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. (Prayer Attributed to St. Francis, Book of Common Prayer, Page 833).

Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, by your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  (Prayer for Guidance, Book of Common Prayer, Page 832).